GT Academy Graduates Enjoy Successful Weekends

The weekend of 9th/10th June once again provided us with a GT Academy winner double-header, as 2011’s champions Bryan Heitkotter and Jann Mardenborough were in action on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Jann’s RJN Motorsport team faced a second successive weekend of Northamptonshire action, as they competed in round 3 of the British GT at Rockingham. In slightly better conditions than the previous weekend at Silverstone, Jann and Alex Buncombe qualified in 9th on the grid in a time of 1’24.383. After the eventful double-length feature race around the International Long Circuit, including an appearance from the Juke-R Safety Car, the team brought the GT-R home 5th overall, just 13.9s behind the eventual winners. The team are now fifth overall in the British GT standings.

Over in Lexington Ohio, Bryan Heitkotter and teammate BJ Zacharias participated in the EMCO Gears Classic, round 6 of the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge. Bryan put in a stunning qualifying performance to put the Doran Racing Nissan 370Z on pole position – the second GT Academy driver pole this season – in a laptime of 1’32.422 of the 2.258 mile circuit. Following the 150 minute, 75 lap race the team finished 8th overall, just 6.6 seconds down on the winners!

This coming weekend, followers of GT Academy have another double-header to look forward to as, for the first time, two Academy winners go head to head in a major international race – Lucas Ordoñez in the LMP2 Greaves Nissan and Jordan Tresson in the LMP2 Signatech Nissan for the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Meanwhile, this year’s GT Academy competitions have reached the final qualifying stages and last year’s winner Jann Mardenborough has released this video to help those trying to follow in his footsteps:

Thanks to Kevin Mc Glone of Red Square Images for providing these photos from Jann’s race!

Another day, another esports-related announcement. Codemasters is getting the DiRT series involved with competitive gaming with the all-new DiRT World Championships. Announced yesterday, DiRT 4 players will get the chance…